Circular saw: how to cut angles?

If you want to cut angles with the circular saw, that's no problem. Which angles can be cut, how to do it, and how to use an angle stop and a cross stop correctly, read in detail in this post.

Slanted cuts

With a circular saw you can not just make cuts in the 90° angle. Planks and boards can also be sawed off in certain angles. This may be necessary, for example, if you want to saw out of a board a triangular shape.

If you were to push the board over the parallel distance, the cut would always be exactly parallel to the opposite edge of the board. But if you want to create a cut edge that lies at a certain angle to the opposite edge, there are two possibilities:

the angle stop and

the transverse stop

angle stop

The angle stop is nothing more than a rip fence with an adjustable angle for the cutting edge. As a rule, you can adjust angles from -60° to + 60°. Many angle stops also have snap-in positions for frequently required angle settings. Mostly this is with:

15*

30*

45*

60 * (maximum position)

Always pay attention to the quality and accuracy of the angle stop - grossly incorrect angles often make the workpiece unusable. Low-cost products may have deviations of up to 3°.

cross stop

The transverse stop is guided along the rail over the table. He lies, as the name implies, across the saw blade. The rail runs but exactly parallel to the saw blade. Adjustable here are also usually from -60° to + 60°.

As with the angle stop, the product quality is crucial here. For low-cost products, the deviations here are usually smaller because they do not add up over the length as with the angle stop. Often the game can even be set. Even with cheap table saws, the deviations are usually only in the range of 1°, a deviation of 2° is already rather a rarity.

Tips & Tricks

By the way: The angularity or angular accuracy of the circular saw is very important for particularly exact cuts. You can easily check them with the familiar 5-slice method. On a square board, an equal piece is sawed off on each side, then a piece on the first edge. Then you can measure and check the angularity of the shape - this results in the so-called "cutting error" in mm / per xy length (length of the board edges). Clearly, this cutting error should be exactly zero.